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Category: Blog

Pharma 4.0 – A Wave in Making!

Industry 4.0 has brought lot of change in many sectors like transportation and logistics, manufacturing, aviation, and oil and gas production. New waive that is coming up is Pharma 4.0 i.e. Implementation of Industry 4.0 in pharmaceuticals

Understanding Pharma 4.0

Similar to Industry 4.0, Pharma 4.0 refers inter-connectivity, automation, integration of AI and ML to make it possible to gather and analyze data across machines, enabling faster, more flexible, and more efficient processes to produce higher-quality goods at reduced costs.

Why to move towards pharma 4.0

Remaining competitive, ensuring to keep market place in tact is pushing pharma manufacturers to improve productivity ensure better control on monitoring. harma 4.0 technology allows for continuous, real-time monitoring of manufacturing processes so any drift away from specified parameters can be predicted and rectified before it turns into a deviation, avoiding the associated down time and loss of product.

Wining over existing control strategies

Pharma industry always had automated process control right from beginning of 90s. But this relatively old system which only alerts when already damage is done. Pharma 4.0 on other hand is proactive in nature. By using sensors and using continuous monitoring techniques, integrated with AI and analytics provides predictive analysis and a world of other business insights that are currently unavailable because they’re buried in unstructured, dispersed, incomplete data.

Role of Big Data

Big data analytics draws data from sources that have traditionally been disconnected from one another, and looks for relationships and trends that were previously undetectable. For example, data from the online inspection system described above can be combined with that from equipment maintenance and engineering systems to streamline maintenance schedules; combining production data with that from sales and dispatch systems can streamline production planning.

How will this transform to a waive

Although pharma is very precautious industry, which requires tighter control and is coupled with very strong statutory norms. However, still Governments, regulators are taking every possible step help enterprises to move towards Pharma 4.0 soon Pharma 4.0 is be waive in itself

Crafsol with its leaders, who have strong understanding of pharmaceutical industry, is ready and keen to help companies to start Pharma 4.0, get in touch with our team now.

How to choose the right IoT Platform?

Choosing right IoT Platform can be a challenging task, coupled with confusion due to thousands options available. Choosing the right IoT platform isn’t as easy as it seems at first. There are numerous categories of IoT systems to consider, all of which offer more or less advanced options depending on your needs.
In this blog we are trying to guide to choosing the best IoT platform for your needs.

Factors to consider

While selecting an IoT platform, one has to consider some factors, These factors will help you narrow down applicable platform, like:

  1. Reason of implementing IoT
  2. What will be your scability needs
  3. What kind of support you need
  4. Does platform that you are selecting adheres to good security parameters

Keep in mind, platform that you are selecting is going to be huge investment and you need to be extra sure before doing it. While above factors help you narrow down the selection process, There are 3 – 4 aspects you need to consider or evaluate before choosing the platform

ROI

While implementing any new tool in the business ecosystem, first point that come in mind is end result and ROI. In this aspect one needs to ensure proper road map is created, even before the platform is selected. Performance metrics are well defined and attributed to respective KPI in the implementation process

Application Industry

Probably even more important point than ROI which needs attention is ‘Application‘ Requirements will drastically change based on application industry. Just to take example medical field will require 100% reliability considering the criticality attached to it. Offshoring will require consistent operations and global connectivity. considering similar requirement for your application than selecting a platform makes real sense.

Security

One needs to take security very seriously while Implementing IoT
IoT devices have become a massive and popular target for cyber attack and during migration when data is in in-transit mode it is even more vulnerable. Unsecured IoT can lead to major risks such as financial losses, info leaks, reputation losses

Bandwidth and Cost

Well, while implementing we may not find this important, however it is very critical aspect when it comes to operational success later on. For ex. Some businesses need lot of data transmission where as some would need lot of storage. Bandwidth will also important with respect of getting desired result of the IoT. One needs to consider current requirement, growth expectancy and capability for Platform to support both.

Data Delivery

if your desired platform is just going to deliver data from a single or two sources, than its point which needs your attention. Consider a situation where your delivery source had a crash, like power outage, connectivity errors or any other case, your system will be unable to work or work in negative manner. Select a platform which offer multiple delivery methods like cloud, on-premise or edge.

Choosing an IoT platform is not easy, but taking the time to research and compare different services could be a game-changer. Crafsol has inherited capability to understand your business action as per define road map and KPI

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5 Trends Industry 4.0 that will drive Manufacturing in 2020

Industry 4.0 and allied technologies are already driving a huge change when it comes to Manufacturing. Although technologies in manufacturing are advancing at very fast pace industry 4.0 is already to set to take it to the next level.

Industry 4.0 has already benefiting manufacturers by increased visibility into operations, substantial cost savings, faster production times and the ability to provide excellent customer support.
As Competition is growing, The only way manufacturers can stay ahead of competitors and win market share is getting best out of technologies. Those companies who want excel and not just survive are on set to ripe best out Industry 4.0

In this month’s Newsletter we take a look at 5 trends that drive manufacturing in 2020

Digital Twins

Although digital Twin technologies have been around 2003, real utilization is up when IoT came into the picture. Digital twins are virtual replicas of physical devices that data scientists and IT pros can use to run simulations before actual devices are built and deployed. They are also changing how technologies such as IoT, AI and analytics are optimized.

IoT

Manufacturers are already leveraging the benefits of IoT by connecting their existing manufacturing infrastructure to internet using unique devices. In 2020 more and more companies even from SME’s will invest in IoT to leverage more informed decisions to achieve increased efficiency, improved safety, meeting compliance requirements, and product innovation.

Increased use of Cobots

Markets have welcomed Cobots positively and some research show that by 2025 investment in cobots will be 12 billion USD. Cobots create opportunities for manufacturers to improve their production lines, increasing productivity while keeping employees safe. Cobots are compact and affordable and easy to use.

AR & VR

Assistive technologies, such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), will continue to create mutually beneficial partnerships between man and machine that positively impact manufacturers. These technologies help businesses work more effectively while also making them more efficient. Helping in several ways like product design, production line development, driving OEE improvements, technical and engineering support, training, team collaboration, inventory management, and more.

Smart Factories

Businesses, to stay competitive, are striving hard to make their production lines more efficient, effective and utilize the resources to fullest all this to achieve better productivity.

The smart factory represents a leap forward from more traditional automation to a fully connected and flexible system—one that can use a constant stream of data from connected operations and production systems to learn and adapt to new demands.

While above is just a quick list of trends that will be seen in next year, it does show the opportunities that exist in 2020 and beyond for manufacturing companies with a forward-thinking and innovative outlook.

Want to know more about how Crafsol can help you?
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What’s the linkage between ERP and BI?

In ERP the entire focus is on automation or efficiency improvement. BI is more about improving performance. The top management has to question the current reality. For example, if revenues/sales person are Rs. 1 Cr., Can I make it 1.25 Cr. And if I want to do it what should I do?

You talk about incentives, training etc. We suggest you give him intelligence and the impact on his her performance could be highest. BI is the case for empowering people to perform better and without the empowerment, training and incentives will produce only partial results.

But there is skepticism about BI. This will go away in near future like it happened with ERP. Today, it is rare to see people who argue about the need for having ERP software. For any new plant that is being put up the boiler, generator and ERP investments are put at par. Unfortunately, in case of BI there is no physical system like ERP. BI starts with a proposition
like – can I bring in a 25% reduction in your inventory. It’s a conceptual thing and often it is relatively difficult to visualize the end outcome. Also, end outcome is dependent upon action taken based on BI. Therefore it is difficult to assign the ‘credit’ to BI.

Data driven decisions or your gut feel?

If you can see the performance of the organization with naked eyes, you don’t need BI. For example, the owner of a south Indian restaurant doesn’t need BI because he is observing the performance in run-time. In restaurants, performance can be dramatically improved by earning more revenue per table/hour or by getting the customer to spend more. The owner is able to see and control the situation in runtime.

Now imagine, if the same guy had seven restaurants across various locations. All his managers at other restaurants may not be equally competent as the owner and that is where BI can play a role. Another daily life example would be a medical shop. A pharmacist once told me he keeps twenty days of inventory. He was using simple billing software. Although, the data could be seen with naked eyes, with four thousand items in inventory, it was almost impossible to really
identify the excess inventory in the shop.

BI is useful where performance or data is not visible with naked eyes (because you are at a distance) or the data is too complex to be analyzed purely in one’s mind. Also, BI is not advocated to replace gut feel; but gut feel decisions can definitely be far more effective after studying the facts rather than without the facts; won’t you agree?

Who needs Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics?

To draw an analogy from the medical world, BI is not a medicine for a disease. It It’s more like a tonic.
Off course, if there is a disease, meaning a problem, it will help. The cause of disease in any organization cannot be lack of data analysis. Medicine is to remove the disease. Tonic is to remove the weakness induced by the disease.

Challenge the norms!

From a framework perspective, companies which are stagnating or certain departments/people within the company who are stagnating, would do very well with use of BI.

Stagnating, in terms of daily work, can be defined as a situation where people accept some failure rate as normal. For example, if you meet 100 prospects and 10 are converted to customers, you say, these are good results because traditionally you have never done better. Similarly, in a manufacturing environment a particular rejection rate, over a period of time, becomes a norm. But if break-through performance is to be achieved, these norms need to be challenged.

BI will help you to find ways to where you are failing, why you are failing and how to improve the performance.